Thursday, December 20, 2012

An E-Mail From Papa Jean

Canada is a country of tolerance. Where you can succeed regardless of language, skin colour, religion, or physical ability. These are values we cherish and have worked hard to build.

These things we love about Canada did not happen by accident. They were choices. I made some of them: Eliminating the deficit. Introducing the Clarity Act. Keeping Canada out of Iraq. The Landmines Treaty. The Kyoto Accord. The Millennium Scholarship.

And previous Leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada who became Prime Minister made others: Medicare. The Canada Pension Plan. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These choices are what built the Canada we love.

The Tories have made choices too: They ended gun control and cut seniors' pensions. They brought in deficits year after year after year. They chose to spend $40-billion on fighter jets, misled Canadians about the true price tag and then tried to cover it up when they got caught! They tore up Kyoto and our environmental laws. And many in the Conservative Caucus keep undermining a woman's right to choose. What other rights will be targeted next?

But Canadians also have a choice. They can choose their Prime Minister. And our job as Liberals is to give Canadians a Leader who will fight for our values.

Right now, our ability to do that is in danger. We still need 2,217 more Liberals to join the 5,000 Wishes for Canada Campaign so we can hand over a strong, united and grassroots-powered organization. A Party with the resources it needs to introduce our new Leader to Canadians on our terms and win the next federal election.

Richard, until you choose to fight for your values, the Canada we believe in will remain out of reach.

As noted previously I have enlisted as a "supporter" of the Liberal Party.

Reading this bit of fund raising spam I'm not sure what annoys me more, the Liberal Party's continued arrogant assumption that the success of this nation has depended on their leadership, or that the tax credit system is so absurdly generous to political parties. I can think of many causes far worthier of my $5.00 than the Liberal Party. Indeed any political party.

Objects lessons are often considered the most effective. Show how a bad approach leads to a bad end. Yet here we have a former Liberal Prime Minister writing, or at least approving someone else's writing, that what made Canada great was the Liberal Party. This is the sort of arrogance that put the party in third place. Nor is it the usual partisan conceit. It's deep within the Grit DNA and surfaces from time to time. In sending out fund raising communications the party is talking with its supporters and can let the mask drop a little.

Here are some of the wonderful things that Jean Chretien personally has done for Canada:

These things we love about Canada did not happen by accident. They were choices. I made some of them: Eliminating the deficit. Introducing the Clarity Act. Keeping Canada out of Iraq. The Landmines Treaty. The Kyoto Accord. The Millennium Scholarship.

Clarity Act? You mean that piece of legislation that was passed after the Chretien Liberals nearly lost the 1995 Referendum? The act whose rough outlines were sketched by one Stephen Harper, then a Reform MP. Certainly Stephane Dion played a vital role in placing careful legal hurdles to a viable third referendum, but these ideas did not spring Minerva like from either Dion or Chretien's brains.

Eliminating the deficit? This is technically true. The best kind of truth Grits typically manage. It is true that Paul Martin as Finance Minister was not as fiscally reckless as Jean Chretien as Finance Minister. The times had changed. The Mulroney Tories had introduced the GST. Interest rates began a long downward slide. The Liberal government cut back transfers to the provinces. An NDP government would likely have driven Canada into Greek-like chaos. So what? Should we compliment every sober man because he refuses to drink himself stupid each morning?

Keeping Canada out of Iraq? Had you done so out of some great principle or insight this might have been a point of pride. Instead you were driven by a juvenile anti-Americanism that has been endemic in the Liberal Party since at least Pearson's time.

Kyoto Accord? You mean that anti-industrial atrocity you never bothered to enforce? Which the Canadian government has just formally pulled out of? Talk about a failed policy.

The Millennium Scholarship? Right. Because what Canada needs now is more university graduates.

A track record of public policy failures interspersed with the occasional PR victory, that is the history of the modern Liberal Party. And they're still at it today.

Then there are the lies.

The Tories have made choices too: They ended gun control and cut seniors' pensions. They brought in deficits year after year after year. They chose to spend $40-billion on fighter jets, misled Canadians about the true price tag and then tried to cover it up when they got caught! They tore up Kyoto and our environmental laws. And many in the Conservative Caucus keep undermining a woman's right to choose. What other rights will be targeted next?

The Conservatives have NOT ended gun control. There are still plenty of restrictions on gun ownership and use in Canada today. The federal government merely ended the long-gun registry. A registry is not a control. It was, however, an invasion of people's privacy to assuage Left-leaning urbanites who are afraid of loud noises. It's practical value in reducing crime was pretty close to zero. Criminals, it turns out, have a natural aversion to correctly completing government paperwork. This is an understanding that oddly alludes Jean Chretien, a man whose political career covered the better part of four decades.

Cut seniors pensions? No. That too is a lie. Those Canadians under 50 will now have to wait until 67 to collect their pension. No current senior citizen is being impacted. This change is long overdue and simply reflects modern Canadian demography: We live longer and so need to work more.

Spending $40 billion on fighter jets? The federal Tories have NOT spent that much on the F-35 because they have not actually bought the plane. It was the preferred choice of the government but no final decision had been made. That exaggerated figure, thrown around loosely by the MSM, reflects an operational lifespan of four decades. Some of that money will be spent by governments whose ministers are now in kindergarten.

They tore up Kyoto? Big deal. You cynically signed the Kyoto treaty knowing perfectly well that you could not and would not even try to implement its requirements. The partisan difference on Kyoto is that the Liberals lied outright and the Conservatives are being slightly more honest.

Undermining a woman's right to choose? Leaving aside the cynical euphemism "choice," especially when used by a political party that would gladly deny Canadians the right to choose to buy firearms, it's not even true. Not even true in the vague Alice in Wonderland sense that truth has been reduced to in modern politics. A few Tory backbenchers have made a few limited efforts to debate the issue of abortion and some of its implications. They have not tried to actually curb abortion's legality. These very modest attempts were immediately slapped down by the PMO and the Party Whips.

"What other rights will be targeted next?"

The word you're searching for is chutzpah. A man who served under the most anti-liberty Prime Minister in Canadian history talks about rights? There is nothing in the conduct of the modern Liberal Party party, from Medicare to Kyoto, that suggests they have any respect for individual rights. They love only power and the promoting of the ersatz rights of the shiftless to live off the taxpayers.

I'd rather give my $5 to the first drunk I meet on Bloor Street. He would only destroy himself with the money.

Comments

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“Keeping Canada out of Iraq? Had you done so out of some great principle or insight this might have been a point of pride. Instead you were driven by a juvenile anti-Americanism that has been endemic”

Moreover it had to do with a Quebec election that Spring and Quebec tends to be pacifist like the Euroweenies. The timing of Canadian military openly joining the Brits and Australia would have given Charest the boot in favour of Separatists. In fact we did participative in a clandestine way. I met a Canadian Air Force navigator who flew missions over Iraq, seconded to the Brits, to try to bunker bomb Saddam into submission days before the full blown war.

“Cut seniors pensions? No. That too is a lie. Those Canadians under 50 will now have to wait until 67 to collect their pension.”

Besides, Old Age Security is not a pension. It is not funded. It’s welfare. It was not contractually paid into like a pension. It comes out of general revenues not out of an actuarially monitored trust like CPP.

To be fair, staying (almost) out of Iraq and cutting non-interest spending by 10% are great things. But the spam still reads as a cruel caricature of the Liberals party's "We (I) used to be somebody" delusions of past grandeur.